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Hydrogen Vehicle Generates Its Own Fuel
An anonymous reader writes "Our friends at The Arizona Republic have the scoop: 'The truck is hydrogen-powered and creates its own fuel from solar energy and water, a technical feat that rivals the advanced technology being researched by major auto companies and universities. The four-cylinder engine is tuned to run on hydrogen, which is produced by a hand-built electrolysis system mounted in the bed.' You can also help this project."
Although the truck performs as planned, it's more of a demonstration project than a practical vehicle. The four solar panels and hydrogen-generating system create only enough fuel per day to travel a few miles.
:-)
And it's not going to go any farther. On an average day, you're lucky to receive about 200 watts/m2 of sun power. The rest of the energy (about 1.3kw/m2) is lost to diffusion and blockage by the atmosphere.
We've discussed this before on Slashdot, and it has been felt that Sun power could be a great "fuel saver" idea for hydrogen cars. But moving something the size of a modern car is going to require more energy than you can collect from sunlight. (IIRC, ~2 kw to cruise and 10kw to accelerate a small car.)
That being said, I applaud their efforts in the direction of alternative energy sources. Hydrogen is simply not as powerful as petroleum products, but it's pretty close. Concepts like creating fuel with a built-in electrolyzer could be the key to making hydrogen cars seem just as powerful and efficient as petroleum vehicles.
Now if they wanted to prove that hydrogen fill stations could use large Solar Power arrays to power their electrolyzer, then I'm with them all the way.
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Doesn't it make sense to just run a small electric motor with, wich would make the vehicle weigh much less. I guess this would work only if they plan this to be an add-on modules to the already existing hydrogen cars.
Well, one caveat of private research, you only hear about their successes, never their failures. For instance, for a university, a truck that goes a few miles is quite an accomplishment, but could you imagine the PR disaster if Ford unveiling something like this?
Not saying you are wrong, I agree that private sector research and development has lagged for a long time(well, ever since the term ROI became a buzzword really, everyone is focused on short term) but I don't think it's fair to say they are doing nothing, they just don't publicize as much as universities do.
Monstar L
While I agree this is a nice step in the right direction - until we can get cars that 100% fuel themselves (not likely to happen) or can fill up with hydrogen/whatever at the local corner - I fail to see how these will get mass market appeal.
Presumably they could also have used batteries and an electric motor rather than hydrogen and an engine.
I only bring this up because I find it annoying when people refer to hydrogen as an energy source.
What the bloody hell are you talking about? A Chevy S-10 is NOT a terribly heavy truck.
They are cheap...can be had with an economical 4 cylinder, they are easily modifiable, and have a reasonable sized bed to put crazy things like...solar cells...and hydrogen generators. You know...for doing what it does. And stuff.
What would you prefer for this application, O wise engineer?
What about FutureTruck? Or the GM HyWire? How is it a conflict of interest for auto manufacturers to build fuel cell/diesel/hybrid vehicles?
Yes, their project was built for I think this is a step forward but to sit there and claim that there's some kind of conspiracy is laughable. To produce a viable alternative to the combustion engine takes time. It took us over 100 years to get engines that last 100K miles, while at the same time get 30 miles to the gallon, and go 0-60 in around 7 seconds (2004 Honda Accord V6) while at the same time have enough space to seat 5, and put all their stuff in the trunk. And that's what people expect; go around 300 miles before fillups, be able to carry all their stuff and not worry about their engine breaking down on them. That's why we're seeing hybrid technology first so we can build on top of proven technology.
At least, to me. Why have this stuff installed on the vehicle at all? All you're accomplishing is adding weight to the vehicle and limiting the maximum size of your solar array. Doesn't it make more sense to install the solar panels on the roof of your dwelling and put the electrolysis equipment in the back yard?
Does anyone have complete information on building one's own electrolysers, from disassociation to storage? I really don't want to figure it out myself, I just want to build something.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Detroit sees large H2 gas stations as a hazard. They see cars with H2 tanks as a hazard. This avoids the gas stations. How about plugging this in at the house to run the electrolyzer? Or set up a solar panel at the house and fill the tank at night? Keep the regular fuel option for long trips, but use H2 around town. Very much like the hybrids use electric.
The problem with methane is that it will still produse CO2 which is a green house gas, and in any new form of fuel we will want to get rid of any green house gas emissions. This is the biggest reason to switch to H2 as it only produces water on burning. The storage density of H2 is bad if u store it as a gas or liquid. Its only when you start storing h2 adsorbed on some materials that the density will be practical enough for applications. Lots of work is going on in this area of adsorbing h2.
This truck is a poor-efficiency solar vehicle using hydrogen tank as a battery to store power generated during the day.
I still don't get why people imagine that hydrogen will solve anything. If you have to make the hydrogen by electrolyzing water, you've already lost. Water is an ash, turning it back into gases and recombining it severly limits the efficiency of your system : you're losing around one third of the energy when electrolyzing water, and losing again when making it back into water. And you still need an energy source... so why shoot the already poor efficiency of the whole thing to hell by using solar power ?
Save up on the high solar panel costs and weight (unacceptable on a vehicle !) by storing the hydrogen in a more convenient, easy to use way than water, like methanol produced externally. If you really want to use solar power, then extract it from plants, that's the dirt cheap way.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Since they are spliting water, are they making any effort to store the Oxygen in addition to the Hydrogen? I'm not an expert on IC engines, but mixing Oxygen into the combustion chamber is supposed to give you more power right? Maybe they could increase the efficiency that way.
The original poster is right. The primary energy source entering the truck is solar energy. While the engine is a combustion engine, the fuel for the truck is created via solar power. The Hydrogen tank is nothing more then a battery to store energy from the solar power. It isn't terribly efficient either, and would be more efficient if it was an electric motor instead. Though the Hydrogen tank may store more usable energy then conventional batteries.
"I find it curious that the commercial fuel/automotive manufacturing sector can't (or maybe won't) make significant, transparent headway in the arena of alternative fuels and vehicles."
That is because it is hard. Liquid fossil fuels do have a lot of advantages over every alternative fuel so far.
1. Cost. It is a lot cheaper than any of the alternative right now.
2. Power to weight. It beats the daylights out of batteries. Try and build a car that will go 200+ miles on a charge. It is easy to with gasoline.
3. Density. You can pack more energy in a smaller volume than Hydrogen, Natural Gas, or Propane.
4. Ease of use. It is a lot quicker to just fill your tank than to charge an electric car. It is a lot simpler to pump gas into your tank than to refuel a tank of Hydrogen.
5. Infrastructure. When is the last time you say a hydrogen station?
Bio DieselD is the best alternative fuel right now but then you have the moral issue of is it right to use that land for fuel instead of feeding people?
Frankly the first car company that makes a car that does not use fossil fuel but works as well as gas car they will make a mint.
The idea that all the auto makers in the world are including Japan "Japan has to import 100% of its fuel" are keeping a workable alternative powered care a secret is well into the realm of the tin foil hat crowd.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Is anyone else impressed just by the simple fact that these are all high school kids? This is fantastic to see high school students working with technology like this. I applaud their efforts.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
Why not use Lithium Polymer batteries that can be recharged from solar cells while the car is parked, or recharged from the power grid anytime.
The other advantage of Lithium Polymer batteries is energy can be captured from regenerative braking. Hydrogen cycle is a complete waste of energy.
Industry should be concentraing on Lithium Polymer car battery mass production and lower costs, not riding the hydrogen fantasy that will never amount to anything for the mass public!
Actually, I think that this was a smart move. Want to get the average gas-guzzling American interested in alternative sources of energy? Which is a more effective illustration: a nearly transparent, one-passenger 50-pound "car" that my poodle could pull, or a '98 S10 running on sunlight and water?
I'd say that the choice of the S10 was deliberate, and absolutely brilliant.
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Daimler's first fuel cell vehicle started as basically a large mobile laboratory in the back of a panel van (even larger than this school's truck.) They then installed one in a bus, and another in a minivan, and they now have one in a car the size of a Cooper Mini.
The problem isn't getting a vehicle like this on the road. The problem isn't even getting a fleet of them deployed to a single commercial customer (like a bus transit line.) The problems they're encountering now is scaling the entire transportation system so that Joe Sixpack can afford to buy one, drive it home, and fill it up every week.
The most efficient fuel for fuel cell (electric) cars is raw hydrogen. Compressed hydrogen would require an entire new infrastructure to deliver, and would be probably the most hazardous product ever sold to consumers. Liquid hydrogen would be even worse, because of the dangers inherent in delivering tanks of products at 3 degrees Kelvin. So, because of the fuel delivery problems one of the first compromises they had to make was to figure out how to fuel these vehicles with easily delivered, stable-at-room-temperature liquids, instead of compressed gasses. That took time and research. The next problem is that the catalyst required to crack the liquids into raw hydrogen is based on rare precious metals like platinum. Besides taking enough metal to make these engines prohibitively expensive, there simply isn't enough of it on earth to build the number of vehicles that a big car maker like Chevrolet builds every year. So, they've had to experiment with different ways to get the liquid fuels cracked into the base hydrogen.
The vehicle these kids built only cost $10,000, but much of the expense (solar panels) was donated. And it still won't scale, because the solar panels are already operating at something like 30% of their theoretical output. Making a vehicle go from 3 miles per day to 10 miles per day still isn't going to sell.
And despite the best conspiracy theorists determinations, it is far and away in the best interests of a car company to be the first to market selling a truly revolutionary fueled car. Think about what would happen to Ford's stock price if they announced a "sunlight and water powered car" were available. It would truly be a license to print money. The petroleum companies could offer no bribe in the world big enough to slow down a cash cow of that magnitude.
John
OMFG people!
Have you built a car that runs on sunlight and water?
How far did the first airplane fly?
Are you saying this proof of concept is impractical?
Congratulations CHS kids!
No, I'm pretty sure the parent meant President Cheney refering to the popular view that Dick Cheney is to George Bush as Frank Oz is to Kermit the Frog; i.e., the guy with his hand up George's ass making him say what he does.
Part of the problem with this is thus:
Best (expensive!) solar cells on the market available for the average person efficiency: ~25%
Best electrolysis conversion efficiency: ~80%
Best fuel cell efficiency: ~70%
Best overall net efficiency: ~14%
Note that this doesn't factor in important things like compressing the hydrogen into tanks. I'd imagine you'd probably lose another 20% or so of your energy in that process.
Combine this with the low energy input imparted by the sun to an area the size of a car's roof, and there's not much going for this plan. Having an unfoldable sun-umbrella might make it slightly more realistic, but not very.
Even when you get your hydrogen from oil, you get a well-to-wheel efficiency of about 58%, vs. 88% for normal and hybrid cars. And you still need regenerative braking and the other hybrid improvements if you care about energy efficiency, which means that you still need the batteries (electrolysis isn't that fast!).
All in all: good motive, dumb concept. If they wanted a more realistic approach, they'd solar cells on the house hooked up to batteries in the vehicle (battieries have notably higher charge/discharge efficiency, and are less likely to explode... lower energy density, of course, but higher power density).
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It's hard to say. The history of the US shows, however, that military buildups are generally GOOD for scientific R&D. Some of those billions are going toward the things to which you speak - but the "power equation" always comes back around to where the ultimate source is. Hydrogen cars consume way more electricity than a pure battery-powered car does - both get their power from "the plug," afterall. But even then, our supply of clean electrical power is way inadequate to power every car, house, business, factory, etc. - we'd need solar panels and wind turbines on every street, hill, field, rooftop - you name it. SO, the agency and policy to which you speak is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. More nuclear power will mean more electric cars. Of course, the general public will need to be able to embrace nuclear power without some of the current (needless) regulatory oversight.
BTW, I am allergic to raw spinich.
This sig is a test. If this had been an actual sig, you would be reading something quite a bit wittier than this now.
Combine that with advances in solar panel efficiency (both in terms of watts per square meter and watts per dollar) efficient automobile designs (so that less hydrogen is necessary), commercial renewable hydrogen generation (roof not producing enough hydrogen? Supplement your supply with an extra bottle from the solar/wind far across town), and we might have something...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
it still uses water. That's as scarce as gas in Arizona.
Interestingly and scarily enough, (clean) water is a lot more expensive than gas. It's what, $1 for an 8 oz bottle, versus $1 for a gallon of gas?
The developing world is interesting because they still have no notion of paying for drinking water, for better or worse.
Clearly you must have some metabolic disease, or be some non-human lifeform. Metabolism is very well understood, and is very simple. Every calorie absorbed from food is either burned for energy or is stored - unless a disease (e.g. diabetes) causes them to be lost. The body has no mechanism to dump unneeded calories. This is precisely the reason why obesity is such a common problem today. Sure, some energy is needed to keep body temperature up and for the idle (basal) metabolism - but again, this is an extremely closely regulated mechanism, with virtually no difference between people (in the absence of significant illness - e.g. thyroid disease). A healthy stomach/intestine can easily absorb 15,000 calories a day without wastage - if your stomach/intestine didn't absorb all the calories in your food, you'd have hideous diarrhoea/flatulance/stomach cramps.
By your convention, all current internal combusion vehicles are solar powered.
And he'd be correct too. All of the power we use in any form is ultimately solar powered, with the exception being nuclear fission/fusion. And the elements we use for those once came out of stars too, you know.
In this particular case, however, it's generating it's own fuel. Therefore you can consider it to be like a closed system with only one energy input: solar power via the solar panels. Considered that way, this truck is solar powered.
Now, if you yank off the electrolysis bits and put them in a fueling station somewhere, then it's not a solar powered truck anymore. It's a system that gets its power from the hydrogen you pump into the tank.
Almost energy we use ultimately comes from the sun. It's just a question of what part of the total system you are talking about. I don't think that it's unreasonable to include the electrolysis device as part of the system of "this truck" because a) it's hauling the thing around with it and b) they expressly designed it to be part of the truck in the first place.
Therefore this truck is solar powered, because "this truck" includes the electrolysis equipment.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
If you opt for the solar version, it comes with 90 square feet of panels. Current "cheapo" prices for solar panels are $3.69 per watt. A car uses something like 10kwh of energy per hour. To provide you with enough energy to drive constantly powered from the sunlight, they'll cost you about $36,900, plus installation. Want to drop that to your $5000 limit? It'll take over 7 hours of direct sunlight to generate enough hydrogen for that one hour of driving.
Ok, so maybe solar isn't the way to go for a home installer. Let's just plug it into the wall and buy cheap electricity for our converter. Do you want a hydrogen compressor running in your garage unattended, and a tank of compressed hydrogen on hand? Remember, hydrogen is very, very tiny and it leaks from machinery rapidly. So, now you have to install adequate vents in your garage to ensure you don't blow up the next time you start your car.
Sounding good or insurable yet? It gets worse.
This science project completely side-stepped another difficult problem that you raise: how do you engineer a completely safe compressed hydrogen gas fuel transfer system? How do you keep tramp air out of the connectors, and ensure there can be NO sparks? Today, most compressed gasses are handled by trained professionals. They understand the risks, they follow proper grounding procedures, they don't accidentally smoke while they transfer the gasses. Small consumer quantities of things like propane are readily dealt with, but even then does the service station let you fill your own propane tanks? Probably not -- in this state at least, only the station operators can refill tanks. And liquid pressurized gas is still easier and safer to deal with than a compressed explosive gas.
OK, so maybe we take a lesson from these kids and leave the hydrogen generator on board the car, and just plug the whole car into a wall outlet when we get to our destination. Infrastructure solved -- anybody can hang an outlet. Assuming the hydrogen splitter can be built small enough, a 15 amp circuit will still take six hours to deliver 10kwh, enough energy for one hour of driving. That's sounding much closer to practical, but it still retains a lot of the problems and risks associated with storing and handling raw compressed hydrogen (even in the closed system.) It's not a vehicle you would park indoors, for example. And the other problem most engineers have with compressed gas fuels is: how do you protect the occupants from it in a crash? The tanks have to be crashworthy in all manner of collisions, and not just have a 35 MPH front impact resistance warranty.
The auto makers reduced their efforts to use raw hydrogen as a direct-to-consumer fuel many years ago for all these reasons. They certainly could pick it up again at any time, but for now they're still focusing on direct liquid fuel-cells as a safer alternative. The infrastructure already exists to deliver liquid fuels, and the handling risks are much, much lower. Remember, the water is not the fuel in this truck, it's merely an extremely convenient storage mechanism. External fuel still is required to split it.
John